


Choice's Made

by musesmistress



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesmistress/pseuds/musesmistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Olivia have some choices to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Walter’s words kept echoing in her mind ‘please don’t tell him’. How could he possibly ask her to keep something like that a secret? How could he keep it a secret? It was daunting, to see the shift of his being, to see clearly that he didn’t belong there. As soon as they’d stepped out the house, past Astrid heading in, she had started to wonder what else didn’t belong. Did they belong together, working or drinking or even dating? Did they belong together in any form of the word relationship? The walk to the place Peter knew had been silent for her, though Peter had tried hard to spark a conversation before he’d given up and fallen silent. He’d stopped her to ask if she’d changed her mind before they reached the door and she’d given him a smile, apologised and said she was just a little stressed – nothing a few drinks couldn’t cure.

She had to quirk a brow as they stepped in. For a non-date, just friends having a drink, Peter picked one heck of a place to go. The elegant room made her feel very under dressed and seriously out of place in pants and not a dress. This was definitely a date no matter what he said.

Dinner and three glasses of wine let her mind pass over Walter’s painful words and as the evening moved on, she began to look past the flicker of his displacement in her reality and see him as she always had. Peter Bishop, friend, crazy friend with weird contacts and amazing man. As they moved up to the lounge level and he quietly ordered some erotically named drink, she remembered the first time he’d touched her, down to her underwear ready to let Walter drug her silly so she could join her mind with John’s. Peter had caught her, stopping her from hitting the floor and she’d felt that wonderful tingle John had caused in the beginning. His arm tucked across the back of the comfortable curved chairs behind her still brought on the same feeling and she grinned as the waitress proclaimed their drinks.

“Sex on the beach.” Olivia had barely managed to keep the ‘oohh yes please’ from slipping out in Peter’s direction. Mistakenly a drink or so later, Olivia picked up the drink list and started reading out random names.

“Golden Slipper, Hot Toddy, Cliffhanger. You know I always wonder who names these drinks.” Peter chuckled. “Pink Pussy,” she continued, watching his brow raise out the corner of her eye at the name. “French Kiss.”

“Do you want one?” he asked.

“One what?” she asked, picking up her drink and inspecting it for remaining liquid.

“A French Kiss.”

She set the glass down, studying the list again and then turned to him with a smile.

“Sure, why not.” She’d barely got the ‘why not’ out before he leaned in, his lips on hers, tentative at first before seeking a deeper contact and finally moving in to the offered kiss. She didn’t stop him, couldn’t bring herself to want it to end.

“I’m sorry, did you mean the drink?” he asked with a cheeky grin. He was still close, his breath hot on her face.

“Either would have done the trick. I’d say they both have the same kick to them.”

“What would you like next?” he asked glancing down at the list. “The Midnight Joy or the Climax?”

“I can’t have both?” She asked, returning his grin in kind. “Or even the Multiple Orgasm?” she added with just a touch of seduction in her voice.

“You could have all three, but there’s another hour to midnight. Can you wait that long?”

“I can,” she said watching as he beckoned a waiter. “Can you?”

He shifted towards her, pressing himself in close, his breathing on her neck as the man stopped beside their table.

“I’ll have,” Peter started. “A Liquid Viagra.”

“Oh,” she breathed out. “Planning something?”

“And the lady will have a Screaming Orgasm.” Olivia sniggered, trying hard not to burst out laughing and completely unable to look up at the waiter. He turned and moved off as Peter let out a: “What?”

“I would have been happy with the Sex Machine.” She knew his response before the grin spread and he licked his lips.

“You get that as part of the package deal.” He slipped an arm across her stomach, hand curling around her side as he spoke. “Never seen you this relaxed before. Either you’ve had too much already or you don’t drink nearly enough when around me.”

“I think it might be both.” The waiter placed their drinks down and Peter expertly reached out and picked his up without looking. The moan he let out made her breath catch and his forehead on her shoulder as he sucked another mouthful of the drink through the straw made her heart jump into her throat.

She couldn’t get her breathing under control as she picked up her own drink and sipped a little up the straw. The buzz of the alcohol flooded through her like a wave of relief. The week’s events vanished into oblivion and the last year or so of knowledge followed it quickly. Her body tingled as Peter’s hand dropped down over her hip to her thigh and she knew in that second that the kiss he’d almost given her earlier was coming back with interest.

Their drinks half finished, they left, walking a slightly jagged line back towards his house and shushed each other between stifled laughs as they stepped in and made their way up to his room. His jacket was on the floor before the door was fully closed and she wasted no time in removing his sweater and working on the buttons of his shirt as he tried haphazardly, and with great difficulty, to remove something of her clothes.


	2. Chapter 2

Walter hummed to himself as he followed the smell of food and coffee along the hallway to the kitchen. Astrid stood leaning against the counter a mug of coffee cradled in her hands as she waited for the eggs to cook.

“Good morning, Asphalt.”

“Astrid, and morning, Walter. Would you like some coffee?”

He opened his mouth to respond and was startled by a muffled bang from upstairs. They both turned, staring up at the ceiling in wonder until Walter furrowed his brow and turned to the stairs.

“I don’t remember hearing Peter come home last night,” he commented, knowing Astrid was right behind him.

“Neither did I. And I’m a pretty light sleeper. With our job, you have to be. Wait.” She vanished back down the few steps they had taken and returned a moment later.

Walter gripped the doorknob to Peter’s room and turned to look over his shoulder at Astrid.

“Did you bring your weapon?”

“You want me to shoot Peter?”

He smiled. “No, of course not.”

He turned back, twisted the knob and stepped into the bedroom and instantly raised an eyebrow.

“Oh my god,” Astrid exclaimed before she turned down the hall, her footsteps quick on the stairs. In front of him, Olivia, having only managed to get her underwear on reached out and grabbed the cover on the bed and pulled it towards her. Peter quickly grabbed the other side as it slipped quickly off him, sitting up in bed.

“You don’t need to worry about covering up, son. I’m sure Agent Dunham has seen a penis before and I should imagine she has seen yours by now.”

Peter only spared him a dangerous look as he turned back to Olivia and their already started conversation. She’d sat down on the bed, her back to Peter and slipped on her top, pulling it down over the covers before letting them drop to her lap.

“I trust you two used protection.” He added, thinking suddenly that he didn’t know if Peter even kept condoms. “Not that I’d mind grandchildren.” He added as they glanced awkwardly in each other’s direction. The warning look was back on Peter’s face direct at him again before he turned back to Olivia and reached out to grab her arm.

“What do you mean I don’t belong... belong where?” Peter asked incredulously and Walter watched Olivia’s eyes flick up to his face before she sagged in her seat. “Olivia.” Peter’s demanding tone was back, the one he usually used on him when he was annoyed.

He felt the fear wash over him as her eyes met his and his heart sank at the pleading look she gave him. He shook his head.

“Sorry, Walter.” She shook her head at him. “I can’t keep that secret from him.”

“What secret?” Peter demanded.

Silence filled the space before Olivia spoke. “You’re not from this reality.” Silence again and Water wanted nothing more than to turn away. “I didn’t know until last night, when I got here.” She let the covers fall as she moved to retrieve her pants.

“The only way that could be true is if someone took me from the other side.” Peter slipped out of the bed, grabbing his clothes and vanishing into the bathroom with a slam of the door. Olivia dropped back down to sit on the bed, her pants still in hand and her head hung. When Peter stepped back out, his anger had shifted from Olivia to him.

“You took me. When? Why?”

“You died.” It was all Walter could manage to say. He watched almost numbly as Peter grabbed his things and stormed past him. Shoes thudded on the stairs and the door slammed with a rattle of the windows as he left the house. Walter turned away from the bedroom and barely noticed as he passed Astrid on the stairs on his way down. She paused for a moment, the coffee cups in hand before continuing up.

He knew this day would come eventually, perhaps for a long time he’d lived with the delusion that he could keep the secret forever. But now it was out and there was nothing more to it.

~*~

Peter wondered almost aimlessly for a month or so, he didn't really know how long it took him to realise there was another option. He avoided using his bank card and sold his phone as quickly as possible wanting to stay hidden and detached for as long as possible. He knew Olivia at the very least would be watching for him, that morning she had told him she cared about him, that she often sought him out for comfort.

He missed her.

Once, he had picked up the phone and dialled her number only to drop the receiver back on the cradle in frustration. She'd have it traced and then show up and try and talk him into going back. He only wanted to go back for her, but he knew seeing her would lead to Walter.

Even after the gap of time and after putting serious thought to it he could push past the hate he had for the man. He understood, had imagined what he would have done to protect his son or daughter. Had asked himself if he would have gone to such an extreme measure to keep his child. He would have thought long and hard and he would have considered the pain to the alternate’s parents. To his parents.

That had been the trigger, the realisation that he could do something to completely avoid facing Walter again, this Walter anyway. He could go back to the other side. He made his way to Massive Dynamics and waited more than a week to speak with Nina Sharp. He walked in and practically demanded she send him across to the alternate universe. She tried to waylay him, tried to tell him it wasn't as easy as it seemed. He deflected all her attempts and eventually managed to convince her to do it.

But he wouldn't be fooled, he knew the next meeting would include Olivia and Broyles and stood waiting outside watching in confusion as Astrid sat awkwardly with Nina in the restaurant. He hid when the young woman left then made his move for Nina.

“I told you I wouldn't come if either of them where here, did Olivia think I didn't include Astrid in that?”

“Actually, I was expecting Agent Dunham. Seems something has prevented her from travelling. Agent Farnsworth would not tell me what.”

He snorted derisively. Just typical that she couldn't face him now. Perhaps the time laps had turned her feelings to hate.

“So are you going to keep your word?”

“Anytime you wish to leave, you will cross over.” It was as simple as that?

“That's it?”

“You expected more?”

“After the fuss you made about it not being that easy, it seems strangely easy.”

“For you, yes. For us to arrange it is immensely difficult.”

Peter just grinned at her, pushed the chair back and walked out the door. At first he didn’t feel any different, the area around him was exactly as it had been moments before and he considered the possibility that she was messing with him. Or tricking him and any minute now Astrid or Olivia were going to step out and slap him across the face for being an idiot.

Then he felt the shift and saw the change in the building opposite. He turned and found the restaurant replaced by a cocktail bar, a couple sitting leisurely in one of the comfy chairs alone the back wall made him think of his night with Olivia. He shook it from his head, looked either way down the street and started off.


	3. Chapter 3

Olivia took a deep breath before she opened the door to the lab and stepped in. Her hand wrapped tightly in a cast and hung in a sling was going to make the next few weeks somewhat annoyingly awkward. Astrid gave her a smile as she crossed the lab towards the young woman and momentarily turned back to her work.

“Hey,” Astrid said cheerfully as Olivia stopped beside her. “How’s the arm?”

“A couple of fractures and a broken bone or two, nothing I haven’t suffered before.”

“Olivia,” Walter’s tone carried a hint of shock and concern that she’d become used to over the last year or so. “It’s good to see you well.” She couldn’t help but quirk a brow at that as he fixed his eyes on her arm. “I mean aside from the obvious. You really should be more careful.”

“Don’t worry, I’m officially off the run around and get hurt books for at least seven months.”

“Seven months? Why so long?”

“Long story.” She had no idea why she didn’t just tell them now and get it over with, in a few weeks when her arm was better there would be no way of hiding the reason’s she’d been grounded. “I’ll be running the investigations from here using my one arm tool.” She held up her phone. “And someone else will be doing all the leg work.”

“Do we know who yet?”

“Not a clue, someone will be along later today. She will be my partner, answering to me, not the other way around.”

Astrid nodded and returned to her work while Walter smiled at Olivia. There was something about the smile he gave her lately that made her feel uneasy, as if he could see right through her, know her deepest and darkest secrets just by the expression she currently wore.

“I’m gonna...” she couldn’t get away from the idea that Walter knew something about her. She swallowed. “Set myself up in the office back there.” She pointed to the back room and then slowly moved away, as if pulling herself from the look on his face. The knowing, sly, tell tale look that screamed her secrets were out in the open.

As she closed the door behind her, she watched him lean in to Astrid and make a small comment, whatever he said turned Astrid to look in her direction, a similar, though friendlier, knowing smile on her lips.

~*~

Almost two months wondering a reality he’d grown up in before he’d made his way back here, back where he had thought he’d belonged. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Finding a place to stay had been harder than expected, he had no money, for a start, having tried his card in the hole in the wall and got nothing. He’d wondered around, just as he had before, picking up cash as he went and looking for things that were normal to him. The place he rented with Walter was owned by a woman with two small kids, not that he should have expected it to belong to Walter. Phone calls had led him to the fact that the old man was institutionalised here, just as he once was back in the other reality.

Looking for his mother, he’d found her gravestone and leaned that she’d killed herself from grief when three years of searching had still left the couple and police baffled about the disappearance of Peter Bishop. There were simply no clues. A few weeks back, he’d managed to get hold of the letter she’d left behind, placing the blame for his disappearance completely on Walter’s shoulders for the ‘stupid experiments’ he conducted and the fact that he’d rather treat their son as a test subject than a child or even a loved one. ‘A father who is never there, is not much of a father, much the same as a husband who doesn’t come home for dinner, is not much of a husband’, she’d concluded her letter with.

Astrid, was the easiest to find, an office worker at the FBI, she lived here much as she did back in the alternate. Though he’d venture a guess that she was less grossed out, didn’t get called all sorts of names by a mad scientist and probably didn’t have to wake up worrying about what freaky virus or monster they’d been battling today.

Olivia was his biggest shock and his hardest pain.

He missed her, and had gone to her apartment for help. He had been ready to explain everything, teach her what he knew and hoped she’d let him stay. But her apartment was rented by a man in his late 60s and he had no idea who Olivia Dunham was. Likewise, neither did the FBI, she wasn’t an agent here and for over a month he wondered if she even lived in the same city. When he’d found her, just outside Boston, it had been in a lovely home and she’d stepped out of it early morning with a man she’d kissed goodbye before heading off for work. He hadn’t noticed it at first, too fixated on the fact that she seemed to be married, he had followed behind in a dark mood and lost in thought and noticed only as she stepped out of her car and ran a hand down her stomach, that she was pregnant.

It had been then, that small moment that he realised he didn’t belong here. This place was even more of a mystery and even less of a home than the place he’d grown up in. He missed Olivia, wanted to go back and see if they could one day have that moment of stepping out of a house to kiss each other goodbye. He wouldn’t have been stale like that idiot she married, he’d have touched his baby in the process to show he wanted it just as much as he desired the kiss.

There was of cause, one fairly sizable problem. He hadn’t asked Nina how to get back if he changed his mind and she hadn’t considered volunteering the information. Or perhaps she had and something he’d said made her stop. He hadn’t thought about the difficulty of fitting in here, hadn’t considered that all the people he knew and cared for would be leading vastly different lives with people who weren’t him. No one even knew who he was.

He looked up Nina, she didn’t exist here, she’d died years ago of cancer, so he looked higher up the chain of knowledge. William Bell.

The week or so it had taken him to get to Nina and convince her to send him here seemed nothing in comparison to the two and half months he’d spent looking for and getting to William Bell. Once he’d gotten through that door though, things had become extremely easy. Bell knew he was here, knew Nina had set up the trip for him and had expected him to come asking for help earlier. But nothing was free and Peter had to agree to several things in order to get back to his reality. Well the one he at least felt he belonged in.

Almost five months after walking out on Walter and Olivia, he stepped back into their reality. Nothing seemed to have changed and for a day or so he played with the idea of letting them come to him. But he knew the chances of them still watching for him were now slim, they couldn’t watch for him forever and they probably knew from Nina that he’d crossed over.

When he arrived back in Boston it was the middle of the day and without thinking he had headed for the university. Peter didn’t even pause as he stepped into the lab and came face to face with Amy Jessup. He voice was high and shocked as she’d said his name and turned both Astrid and Walter to his presence. He hadn’t know what to expect, hadn’t really considered what he’d say or do or even if he could stand for more than a few minutes in the room.

“What are you doing here?” He’d asked, wondering where Olivia was and if Amy had been brought in to replace her.

“I work for Agent Dunham. She’s not allowed out in the field so, I run around at her beck and call. Literally.”

“Peter,” Walter said sounding frightened that his boy would go nuts again. His mouth opened several times as he attempted something, perhaps an apology, but nothing came out.

Astrid paused a few steps from him, seeming to size him up and consider the chances of a successful hug from him. She gave in after a few seconds and he returned the hug still curious about what was going on around here.

“I need to go,” Amy said eventually and Peter stepped out of the way for her and caught sight of movement in the back room. Olivia. A hand running through her hair, pushing it back off her face. Releasing Astrid and deciding he’d talk to Walter – properly talk to him – later, he headed for the back room.

When he stepped in, she had her elbows on the desk and her head resting in her hands. Her shoulders were tense and he could literally see the frustration of not being about to get outside and do her job. He studied her, trying to work out just what was keeping her from doing just that, but found nothing from her chest up.

“Stress isn’t good for someone who should be getting multiple orgasms from the nearest bar.”

“Peter,” the breathless tone and sheer shock on her face made him momentarily proud. Just the reaction he’d expected from her, though he had also expected her to get up and hug him.

“You break a leg or something? I can’t imagine anything that would stop you from doing your job, yet I’m told Amy does all your running.”

She blinked and almost sat back in the chair, making his brow furrow. “It’s complicated.”

“No broken leg?”

“No,” she said smoothly. He studied her again, moving a few steps closer.

“I can’t for the life of me figure out what would have you sitting behind a desk. Short of losing a limb or paralyzing yourself, you’d be out there working.”

Olivia’s lower lip vanished into her mouth for a moment and she seemed to honestly be afraid of something. Him. He let the silence fill the space between them as she considered telling him.

“I still have all my limbs, and I can move them just fine.” She pushed her chair back. “So I’m guessing there’s something you didn’t consider.” As she stood up, Peter’s mind flicked back to watching her alternate step out of the car and run a hand over her stomach. Olivia was pregnant, and at a guess in parallel to the alternate he’d seen.

For a moment he didn’t know what to think, he was numb, trapped in the image of her with another man he had to mentally remind himself to breath and forced himself to swallow. He shifted, trying to count back over all the time he’d been away and work out just how far along she was. It could be his. It had to be his. He hadn’t noticed she’d moved until her hand came to rest on his arm and his eyes flicked up from her stomach to her eyes, still green and just as beautiful as he remembered.

“Do you know if it’s a girl, boy or alien of some sort?”

She gave his arm a sharp slap and laughed as a tear ran down her cheek. He couldn’t stop himself from pulling her into a hug, his hands rubbing at her back as she pressed herself into his embrace.

“Where did you go?”

“I tried to find my home,” he said leaning in close she could feel her cheek against his. “Only it wasn’t there, it was here.”

“I could have told you that.” Walter’s voice was a harsh inclusion to their conversation and he separated just enough to give him and a grinning Astrid a half-hearted stern look.

“No matter how many paths you take in life, you always wind up just where you belong,” Peter muttered, turning back to Olivia.


End file.
